Reading old books

2) Go to either Google Books or Project Gutenberg (or some other sites that publish books, e.g. Mises.org). At Google Books search for “full view” books. Here’s an example of a title page. You can then click the “Download” link in the upper right and download the book in EPUB format (pdf from Google Books will not work for this strategy – see below*). At Gutenberg you can save the book in html or txt format (sometimes EPUB is also available).

4) Open Stanza and open the EPUB/html/txt/pdf file of the book you downloaded. (Stanza will read a lot of formats, so you can pretty much convert any text file to read on your Kindle).

5) In the “File” menu of Stanza, there is an option to export the book. Do so in “Amazon Kindle” format.

6) Connect you Kindle to your computer and transfer the new .azw file (Amazon Kindle format) to you Kindle.

7) Read the book.

My wife got me a Kindle for something like $250. I’ve probably read almost 200 old books on it and paid $0 for each book. That’s a $/book cost of $1.25 and I’m still going.

In an afternoon, you’ll easily be able to transfer a couple hundred books to you Kindle. There’s no cheaper, easier way to read the best books in the world.

Note: I was wrong about the iPad. See the first comment

* There are two types of text pdf files available. In one type, the text is search-able and selectable. In the other, each page of the pdf is a picture of a page in a book (this is what Google Books publishes). You can transfer the former to you Kindle in the method described above. You can transfer the latter to you Kindle as well, but the latter will not display as well and the process is different (in short, you have to send to an email address at Amazon and they’ll send you back a converted file for free).

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3 Responses to Reading old books

I thought about getting a kindle, but in the end decided to wait for Apple. epubs from Gutenberg work great in Apple’s iBooks app. For an additional $2, I got the GoodReader app, which is an excellent pdf viewer. I actually prefer this option, because I can download the pdfs from Google Books, and they look charmingly old-timey on my iPad. The epubs from google are often twitchy – the OCR is not perfect. GoodReader also has the advantage of wireless syncing, you have to actually plug in the iPad to update the iBooks app.

I’m reading all three books from Moldbug’s challenge at once, which is slowing me down, but I’m enjoying bouncing back and forth. After that, I’ve got the entire Harvard Classics loaded up and ready to read. My wife’s just into volume three of that.

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero; Books written words, are still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,—they are precious, great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives: can be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.
—Thomas Carlyle

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"To have been always in the right and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism,—and yet never to lose anything, not even position or public esteem, is pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession that a man can have. There is a large body of such men in England, and, personally, they are the very salt of the nation. He who said that all Conservatives are stupid did not know them. Stupid Conservatives there may be,—and there certainly are very stupid Radicals. The well-educated, widely-read Conservative, who is well assured that all good things are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the people, is generally the pleasantest man to be met."
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.
- Madame Roland

vox populi, vox humbug
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Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once There was The People - it shall never be again!
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Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
- John Adams

[T]he first Whig was the devil
- Samuel Johnson

The people that awakes, first shouts, then gets drunk, pillages, [and] murders, and later goes back to sleep.
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